Sure you can. I used one all the time when I was in after giving birth (a nearly week long stay with a c/s for each kid.) My FIL had some vascular work done and used his to entertain himself the whole time he was there (2 weeks). Maybe it's different in the UK?

Regardless, I'm sure they would have SOME way to get hold of them without having to rely on the receptionist at the hospital.

All 3 of the hospitals I've been in have always had signs prohibiting cell phones inside of patient rooms/on the floors. They can work in a hospital but people are asked not to use them where they can disrupt the quiet/interfere with staff. They are usually allowed in waiting rooms. That doesn't stop people from using them where they shouldn't be.

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"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." — Douglas Adams

When I worked for Major Bank, the absence policy was quite liberal. We got so many hours a year of paid time off to use however we wished. So, if we woke up and it was a gorgeous day and we decided to go golfing, we just had to call in and say "I'm not going to be there today". They really didn't care why. There was a points based attendance system, so if you took an unplanned absence, it did count against you, but the way it was structured it would have been really difficult to get into any trouble by taking occasional golf/ski days. The only real problem was for chronic illness, but that only became a problem if you couldn't document the illness. They were pretty liberal in granting intermittent FMLA leave, so if you had something ongoing with yourself or a dependent, it didn't count against you anyway.

That's how mine is. We're just concerned with making sure at least someone is in our section all the time because we handle last-minute questions from other sections, and making sure you meet your deadlines. So too many absences or too much last-minute stuff would be a problem. Otherwise, if you want to take off a pretty afternoon, go for it.

You can in some nowadays. There are a few areas where you can't. but these are clearly signposted. There is WiFi in some places too - I don't know how my nephew would have coped without access to Minecraft!

When I worked for Major Bank, one of the biggest rules we had was that we were not allowed to look up our own accounts on "employee" systems (the mainframe and other systems that employees used to work with customer accounts). We were allowed to use the internet to go to the online banking site, like any other customer, but we were not to use employee systems as a customer (does that make any sense?). The whole reason was to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. We had the power to reverse transactions, move money around, do bank originated credits and debits and all that fun stuff, so to mess with your own accounts could look very, very bad. Also, every movement you make on the computers is tracked, so it would seem obvious that you would get caught in fairly short order. Anyway, one of my coworkers regularly broke this rule. He wasn't doing anything "bad", just balancing his checkbook and such, but still, we'd all been given dire warnings about the consequences of such actions (immediate termination). Of course, CW was caught and just couldn't understand why he was being let go.

Oh, yes! There was a bank employee/IT/programmer some years ago who discovered a wonderful way to increase his own balance without anybody noticing it. When a bank figures interest on savings accounts and CDs, it often comes out to fractions of a cent. Something like $2.2894, instead of a simple $2.28. In the past, the bank just rounded the amount down that they gave to a client and held onto the extra fraction of a cent. IT Guy told the computer to divert it to his account. The bank's clients never missed it, because they never saw it in the first place. The bank didn't miss it, at least initially. This was a large bank chain with many clients, and those fractions of a cent piled up to several thousand dollars a month going into IT Guy's account. I regret to say that I don't remember how he got caught. An audit, maybe.

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Common sense is not a gift, but a curse. Because thenyou have to deal with all the people who don't have it. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As amusing as all the "I called in ..." stories are, I think what made the original SS a PD candidate is that she called in on Friday, so she needed 3 days of sleep. Also, calling in sleepy or snowcrazed is interesting, but not PD unless you are using sick leave to cover the time missed. I liked Outdoor Girl's post above who called in "snow day" to her boss, then offered to pick him up. Clearly that's not going to get her in trouble with her boss if s/he's on the slopes, too.

I work with a clerk who is trying to commit PD. She calls in sick whenever there is a deadline. That's when we discover the mess she's made, which we usually have to unravel, then do the work she was supposed to have done for the month previous - in one day - to meet the deadline. It happens time after time. She's run out of sick leave, so I guess she's going to have to use her vacation leave for her last stunt. She has also called in saying she can't come in to work because her father won't give her a ride. This really irritates those of us who take the bus to and from work daily. She doesn't live far away. I could walk there in half an hour. Several bus routes go past her home and near our workplace. If her supervisor weren't so lazy, this clerk would have been put on probation 2 years ago and we might be rid of her by now. Unfortunately, that would leave us with 2 vacant clerk positions: PD Clerk and Committee Clerk.

PD Clerk is supposed to be acting as the substitute clerk for the committee upon which I serve, but her work is so sloppy and unprofessional that I am now acting as the committee secretary and clerk. I am a licensed professional engineer and manager of the state sludge program and I'm typing letters, sending faxes, etc. I joke that at least I am qualified, having been a professional secretary prior to college. Don't get me wrong, I do not think I am above clerical work. I just question the State's priorities in not hiring a clerk to fill the position that has been vacant for almost 3 years. Apparently it's easier to use a manager to do a clerk's work than hire a clerk.

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

When I worked for Major Bank, one of the biggest rules we had was that we were not allowed to look up our own accounts on "employee" systems (the mainframe and other systems that employees used to work with customer accounts). We were allowed to use the internet to go to the online banking site, like any other customer, but we were not to use employee systems as a customer (does that make any sense?). The whole reason was to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. We had the power to reverse transactions, move money around, do bank originated credits and debits and all that fun stuff, so to mess with your own accounts could look very, very bad. Also, every movement you make on the computers is tracked, so it would seem obvious that you would get caught in fairly short order. Anyway, one of my coworkers regularly broke this rule. He wasn't doing anything "bad", just balancing his checkbook and such, but still, we'd all been given dire warnings about the consequences of such actions (immediate termination). Of course, CW was caught and just couldn't understand why he was being let go.

Oh, yes! There was a bank employee/IT/programmer some years ago who discovered a wonderful way to increase his own balance without anybody noticing it. When a bank figures interest on savings accounts and CDs, it often comes out to fractions of a cent. Something like $2.2894, instead of a simple $2.28. In the past, the bank just rounded the amount down that they gave to a client and held onto the extra fraction of a cent. IT Guy told the computer to divert it to his account. The bank's clients never missed it, because they never saw it in the first place. The bank didn't miss it, at least initially. This was a large bank chain with many clients, and those fractions of a cent piled up to several thousand dollars a month going into IT Guy's account. I regret to say that I don't remember how he got caught. An audit, maybe.

I believe that was part of the plot of Superman 3. Richard Pryor's character does the same thing. He gets caught when he turns up for work in a red sports car...

I once called in to go shopping. Yep, you read that correctly. Shopping. There was a SPECTACULAR sale going on at this mall about 45 minutes from where I live and I really wanted to go.

My boss was pretty awesome about it though. She thought it was the most interesting reason she was ever given and besides she had way over schedule payroll hours that day. Granted, she did ask me to pick her up a pair of specific, hard to find, shoes if I came across them.

She was probably glad you were honest with her, too.

Dark Sister skipped a day in high school to go hunting with Dark Father. When she showed up and told them why, they gave her detention. That's what telling the truth gets you, I guess.

No, that's what truancy gets you.

Oh, so she and my father should have lied about where she was so that she wouldn't get detention? They could have said, "She was feeling ill this morning," and the school wouldn't have given her detention. Instead, they told the school where she really was and she got detention. Ergo, lying would have not gotten her into trouble and not lying got her into trouble, thus "Telling the truth gets you detention."

Well, yes. That's a little like saying "I could have said that I didn't steal the money, and not gotten into trouble . So clearly, I'm being arrested for telling the truth, when I told the police yes, I took it. What an unjust legal system!"

At my school, if my parents called in an absence for whatever reason, it was fine up until the point where I was violating attendance rules. Why didn't they just call in ahead of time and have dad explain that he was taking her out of school for the day? Does no one go on vacations without getting detention for not being in school?

I fully understood the point and was reiterating my own, which is that she could have stayed out of trouble by lying. I was neither condoning skipping school nor saying that what the school did was unjust. If you look at the post I quoted and what I said before I related the story about my sister, I clearly said that telling the truth was a good thing and that the boss probably appreciated the honesty.

I then related a story on the opposite side of the spectrum, where instead of being appreciated, telling the truth actually got someone into trouble when lying would have kept that person out of trouble. My comment at the end was mockery of the situation in which telling the truth got someone into trouble when it usually does the opposite.

Twik, that's not like saying that at all. My sister wasn't getting detention for telling the truth, she obviously got it from not being out of school for a certified reason. The point I was making, was that regardless of the circumstances, telling the truth caused her to get "caught". Using your example, that would be saying, "I could have said that I didn't steal the money, and not gotten into trouble, but they caught me because I told the truth."

Yep. There are plenty of families around here who regularly get pulled into the court system for persistent truancy. In a lot of cases, the parents are home with the kids all day, but they say they can't make their kids go to school, so the kids don't go. A particular problem is parents who "can't" make their kids go to school, and they're tried of getting in trouble with the truancy officers, so they withdraw the kids from public school and declare themselves a "home school." (It's a pretty easy process here.) In our state, home schools are regularly reviewed/visited by local reps from a state board. The "can't make their kids go to school" families have no curriculum or lesson plan or anything, in a lot of cases, the kids are found to be playing video games all day. It's a double whammy because the kids aren't getting an education and it makes life that much harder for the people who are running legitimate home schools and working hard to make sure their kids are getting an education.

Oh, you've met my former SIL, then?

I don't think she got in any trouble over it, more's the pity. Our system must be more lax than yours.

I know a woman like this who is "home schooling" her daughter. What she really did was haul her out of school to take care of her younger brothers. Poor girl is nearly 14 and reads on a 3rd grade level. NO schooling is happening, she's just raising babies.

Ugh. That just makes me so sad. And I hate that those are the sort of cases that a lot of people around my area think of first when they think, "homeschooled."